A Rope of Thorns

by Gemma Files

  It was strong enough to quell much of the noise, though it left Morrow gasping, and the rest of the outcry died away into mutters of confusion as Pinkerton sauntered up. In his wake came Asbury, surprisingly hesitant, while Songbird sat motionless where she’d fallen, not even bothering to lift her parasol. Beneath her unbound white mane, her porcelain face had already begun to redden.

  For all his comparative undress, Pinkerton bore himself like a king, and Morrow recognized the aura radiating off him—whether born of his ordeal like other hexes, or stolen via Asbury’s science, Pinkerton’s hexation was beyond denying now. He made him a genial nod, then folded his arms, in such a way as to brook no opposition.

  “Wi’ the Sheriff dead,” he asked, “who speaks for this township?”

  More or less as one, the crowd’s eyes turned to Sophy. “Sophronia Love, sir,” she said. “And you, of course, would be Allan Pinkerton, of the renowned Detective Agency.”

  “Charged with keeping law,” Morrow interjected, “in those parts where civilization has not yet grown to custom. Law, and justice—a proper court, and a proper trial, and an advocate. To speak for the accused.”

  Pinkerton’s mouth twitched. “And am I right tae guess who ye’d have in mind to speak for, Edward?” He looked back to the crowd, taking in Yancey and her guns, Love’s and Chess’s fallen bodies. To Sophy, with some regret: “Missus Love, though I well ken ye’ve no taste tae hear this, it must be said. Yuir husband was . . . no’ undeserving of his fate.”

  “No, I don’t believe that. My Mesach was a good man—a kind man—”

  “The kindest turn most brutal, given a sufficiency of suffering.” Pinkerton glanced at Chess’s body, lying in its massive, drying bloodstain. “God knows Pargeter dealt out pain wi’ a free hand, before and after turning hex. By reports, yuir husband caught up to him in this young lady’s home town—” he nodded at Yancey, who didn’t move, “—and left quite the field of desolation in their wake. Making her actions, in return, wild justice . . . but justice, naetheless.”

  The crowd was silent. Yancey stared at Pinkerton. Morrow held his breath.

  Pinkerton shrugged, continuing: “Yet . . . tae deal such opens one tae receive it, also, and she’s more than old enough to answer for her own deeds.” He turned to Morrow, spread out his hands, mimicking Pontius Pilate’s classic gesture. “She’s a guid enow lass I’m sure, Edward, but she’s nane of mine.”

  “And that’s the end of it? Walk away, leave us both to swing—?”

  “Oh, I said nought of leaving you here, Ed.” Back to the Bewelcomers, voice battle-captain loud: “This man is mine—and though his crimes require no less judgement, I claim that privilege for myself, as his employer and commander. Does any here dispute me?” The question was bland enough, but Pinkerton lifted one hand as he spoke, allowing it to flicker with bluish-green were-light—cold and searing—which stilled any further protest. “Then I ask ye to release him to my custody.”

  “I won’t be threatened in my own home, sir,” Sophy Love replied, admirably uncowed. “Especially not by a man who claims to represent these United States’ government, while at the same time wielding Satan’s might.”

  “As ye say, madam. It’s I who’s the law’s due representative, even here. While ye’re but a lawman’s widow—new-made, tae be sure, and tragically. But without any real power, except what public sympathy may deed ye—temporal, or otherwise.”

  Another flash, no doubt designed to punctuate his argument. Instead, it sent whispers spreading throughout the crowd behind her, equally mutinous: Pinkerton’s a hex? When’d that happen? Are we t’be plagued with these creatures forever?

  Sheriff would’ve seen to it we wasn’t, he hadn’t been cut down, by her over there. Which makes him just as guilty, that other Pinkerton man, for bringin’ her here in the first place.

  Morrow looked to Asbury, desperate for any further aid, but the old man only shook his head; his will was broken, at least momentarily. Back to Yancey, whose frozen fury had finally begun to melt, revealing fear beneath; no immediate solution there, either. Begging might not help, but it was all he had left—and for her sake, he was not too proud to do it.

  “Mister Pinkerton,” he began, “please. Missus Kloves doesn’t deserve—”

  “There’s blood on her hands, Ed; the price is clear.” Pinkerton came closer, lowering his voice. “Now, if you dinnae wish tae swing alongside her, you’ll come right quick, wi’ nae more struggle.” But here a frown knit his brow; he straightened, turning, toward something only he could see. “And what in hell’s own name might this be?”

  Morrow felt the rumble before he heard it, and looked up—just as, on the far side of the open square, the air ripped apart like a torn silk scrim to expel a cold, wet gust of wind, a sodden northern night-storm’s air. With a yodel of alien song, a whole platoon of copper-coloured riders poured through the black gash—arms presented, arrows nocked, with an immodestly open-vested Apache shamaness at their head.

  Yiska.

  Some woman—not Missus Love—cried out from the crowd’s backside, like she was seeing the Last Days ’emselves dawn bloody, red skies and all: “Savages? Oh great God Almighty, what next?”

  A fair enough question, Morrow recognized, though he knew himself sadly inoculated against the miraculous these days, whatever stripe it was.

  Yiska reined in her horse with a yip and a flourish, almost at Pinkerton’s feet; he stared up at her, arms pugnaciously re-crossed. Even to the uninformed eye, they certainly seemed to know each other.

  “‘The Night Has Passed,’ is it?” Pinkerton said. “Bad day in a bad few years tae go raiding, I’d think—and a damn strange place tae target, too. Unless ye knew somethin’ we nane of the rest of us did, in advance.”

  Yiska shrugged. “Only that when two gods fistfight, things are not often left the same, in their wake.” Her eyes narrowed, appreciatively. “But then, you are not quite what you were either, are you—you who I last saw in the second Naahondzood, the Fearing Time, after we helped win that War of yours for you, only to be driven from our homes like cattle.”

  “Ye’ve come back since then, I see—gathering in force, armed tae the teeth, as the Indian Act forbids.”

  “I see no Agents here but yours, bilagaana. And you are but a hex new-made, if that.” She sniffed, then wrinkled her nose. “Ah, chah! Not even. A sham Hataalii, stuffed with stolen might. I am more fit to wield it than you, fool.”

  Pinkerton’s brows drew together, beetling. “Ye know . . .” he began, calmly enough, “one thing I’m gettin’ main sick of, these days, is the sound of Chink and Injuns frails callin’ me fool.”

  His hands drifted together, all but met, conjuring an even stronger reaction: a minor conflagration, hot enough to make all the non-hexacious step back a tad, dancing between both palms like some captured djinn. But Yiska merely sneered.

  “Hear me,” she said, raising her voice slightly—not even deigning to address Pinkerton directly, but rather her band, who grunted and clicked their tongues in appreciation. “It is as Red Cloud of the Oglala spoke: We have now to deal with another race—small and feeble when our fathers first met them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not. They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbours away. We cannot dwell side by side. My brothers, shall we submit, or shall we say to them: ‘First kill me, before you take possession of my lands.’”

  Pinkerton shook his head. “A pretty speech, indeed. But it’ll no’—”

  “Be quiet,” Yiska snapped, with such natural authority that almost all engaged parties did just that, at least for a second; she cocked an ear, listened hard, then laughed out loud, as though she had heard something she liked. “Hah, yes! The Spinner has not forsaken us, after all; she pulls her threads, shaking the web from sky to sky
. This is far more like it.”

  “More like what, yeh daft squaw?” Pinkerton demanded, purple to his very hairline.

  Yiska gifted him with a smile like a wolf’s, all teeth.

  “Change,” she said, happily, throwing back her head. And howled.

  While, at the same time:

  This is a forked path, dead-speaker, Grandma’s spirit whispered, so low only Yancey might hope to hear. The fabric turns in my hands. Help me, so I may help you.

  Since your advice’s always been so good on the whole, thus far—that right? Yancey wanted to say, but merely shook her head, instead, drawing an odd look from Sophy Love. Given the drama currently playing out between poor Ed, Pinkerton, and the Diné woman, however, it was only a matter of time before the woman turned away again, distracted—allowing Yancey to ask, mentally:

  How?

  Let me come into this world once more, and act, for both of us. Lend me your witch’s strength, freely.

  I . . . my Ma said that wouldn’t be a bright idea, for either of us.

  And she was right, under most circumstances. Still—have you a better plan to offer?

  To hell with all hexes, alive or not, Yancey thought, hopeless—then, as Yiska’s howl split the sky, tightened her finger on the left-hand gun’s trigger, sending a bullet into the ground. It kicked up a distraction’s worth of noise and dust, scattering just enough of the crowd to cut her a clear path. She twitched her other barrel away from Sophy Love’s blank face, getting barely a blink in return for this last misguided spasm of mercy; annoying, but not so much so as to keep her around. Because for all these fools might be fixed to lynch her, she told herself, she really had come here to kill one man only, in the end. And now that that job was done with—she found she didn’t aim to kill more, no matter how much they might pique her. Not ’less she absolutely had to.

  Sprinting faster than she’d ever thought she could, Yancey barged past the men who held Morrow pinned, kicking one of them square to the back of the knee as she went and breaking his hold; from the corner of her eye she saw Morrow duck under the other’s wild haymaker swing, moving neatly sidelong to let him lay his own already wavering buddy out. The ensuing chaos sent Sophy Love scurrying back toward her husband’s body, one arm flung out as though to ward off further damage, the other keeping her baby shielded as best she could. Those near enough to see closed ranks around her, while the others joined the general tangle: Pinkerton and the Bewelcomers, Yiska and her braves, a swirl of sand and flying hooves, fresh gunfire blooming wild in her single shot’s wake.

  She was almost to Chess’s body, boot-soles already tacky with his blood. A length behind her was Morrow, whose eyes met hers on the back-glance, apparently trusting she had some plan in mind. That one look was sufficient to make him spin on his heel and take up a defensive position, unarmed but game, to block any comers.

  A good man. She could only hope he’d come out all right from this, whatever “this” might prove to be.

  Hope we both do, come to that.

  “Any time,” Yancey said, shutting her eyes; Indeed, Grandma replied. And she felt something pull at her, inside and out, with such force it made her want to scream, fall face-down, be violently ill ’til she passed out. Like the cosmos itself was treating her as its personal spool, winding everything she had and more out of her at once ’til she felt turned inside-out.

  And just like Ezekiel’s spinning wheel, their differing degrees of power rose to meet and mingle in the middle of the air.

  Morrow knew he shouldn’t have been able to hear anything over the ruckus Yiska and Yancey had kicked off; the Na’isha riders had responded to Yiska’s howl by breaking into yells of their own and sending their mounts into a wild, circling gallop around the flummoxed, infuriated Bewelcomers. For all Yiska’s threatening, he couldn’t help but notice that none of her followers seemed actually to be striking lethal blows—they kicked and slapped, whacking backsides, heads or shoulders with the butt-end of tomahawk or spear, but never drew more than a solid punch’s worth of blood.

  Meanwhile, the enraged Pinkerton began trying to lay Yiska out, to no very good effect, raw whiplash arcs of power slashing from his hands—but she, in turn, struck the hexation aside with swift slaps, shrugging it off as she danced her mount aside using only knees and thighs. Something like what Sheriff Love had done himself with Rook, Morrow supposed, right here in the fight that had first set everything in motion. For a moment he had a disorienting feeling of vast, slow-spinning circles coming back round to their starting points; a dreadful sense of futility and inexorability overwhelmed him.

  Then Yancey made one of the worst noises he’d ever heard, something that should by all rights have gone utterly missed in the chaos: a small blurt of breath, a whimpering grunt, that reminded Morrow of nothing so much as the surprised gasp of a man gut-stabbed—but far far worse, for being in Yancey’s clear voice. Even as he spun back round, rushing to catch her as she folded, he wondered crazily if he’d heard it with his ears at all. She was grave-pallid, face drawn tight as if in agony, though her eyes stared blindly and all sound but the faint gasps of her breath had stopped.

  Of themselves, his fingers moved, stroking a damp lock of hair back from her forehead . . .

  . . . and Yancey’s hand flashed up, seized his wrist with shocking strength. The world shifted as Yancey’s sight slammed into Morrow’s own brain, dizzying him. Without transition, there was another Injun woman standing before Yancey: a squat, white-haired old squaw with one hand extended toward the girl and the other pointing skywards, above the moiling crowd. From Yancey’s midsection, a glowing silver thread spun with flash-flood speed into the squaw’s hand, leapt to the other and then into the air, where it gathered in a swelling knot over the Bewelcomers’ heads. And beyond, off to one side, watching with looks respectively of remote, amused interest and drawn, battered grief—

  The Rev, by all that wasn’t holy. And his Rainbow bride, too.

  Morrow’s hand clenched tight on Yancey’s, memories backlashing down the link to her like a lightning-strike, and both of them instantly knew what must’ve happened to Chess during that lost moment of time, when it looked like Sheriff Love had him pinned. Some final confrontation with his ruiner and his transformer had driven Chess to make any choice at all, rather than allow more destruction—and from the grief on Rook’s face, perhaps it’d been the only choice that would truly hurt the other man. For whatever consolation that might be, now, to him . . . or them. Or anyone.

  That is as may be, soldier, said the squaw. But I have no time for lovers’ quarrels. I care only that Rook and his Anaye-wife be stopped, for good and all. Your dead-speaker girl has promised me her power to that end in return for Yiska’s aid. Interfere with me at your peril.

  “You’re killing her,” Morrow said.

  No, the girl is stronger than you know, and I have worked such medicine before. I know my arts. The squaw glanced up at the knot of light in the air, and nodded.

  She made the same snapping motion Morrow had seen Songbird do, as if breaking off a thread, and the silver strand of light parted in her hands. Yancey instantly drew in a massive, choking gasp, colour flooding back to her face; Morrow pulled her close, steadying her. Looking up, he saw the silver knot burst, lashing streaks of light out to a hundred different points.

  Wind whirled up, still refreshingly cool with the surge of new life, and spun into a circular wall of air and sound. With such instant speed and coordination that Morrow knew it had been prearranged, Yiska and her braves broke off, flooding away from the panicked Bewelcome crowd—and before Pinkerton, still a-rage with lightning, could give chase, the wall of wind had begun to fill second by second with flying shards of bone and tooth and stone.

  Around and around these spun, thickening, ’til the squaw yanked hard on the thread-end of silver light she still held. The wind shifted in a flash, fossil shards funnelling upwards into the air, then downwards onto her, covering her the same way a snuffer does a
candle flame. In bare moments they had piled head-high, then twice that, boiling like stew-pot clay. And then they collapsed inward, locked solid—revealing a giant grey manlike figure, rough-hewn, dragon-toothed and clawed, which towered over the crowd, swaying slightly.

  More screams, total panic: Bewelcomers poured backwards, leaving only Pinkerton behind, who glared at this thing as though he found it personally offensive. The giant paid no attention to any of them. It turned, steps sledgehammer-ponderous, and aimed what vaguely resembled its face toward the twin figures of Ixchel and Reverend Rook. Lifting one three-fingered taloned hand, to point, it roared—Diné words instantly made clear to Morrow too, through Yancey’s interposition.

  “YOU! YOU WILL . . . BE . . . STOPPED.”

  Shit-fire, Morrow realized, that’s her in there. Hex-ghost riding a lizard-bone Merrimack, looking to pick a fight with a Goddamn god.

  Never could say you lacked for entertainment ’round these parts, could you? He found himself musing, grimly.

  In reply to the old lady’s challenge, meanwhile, Morrow saw something he’d genuinely never expected: a look of true shock, and real fear, on the face of Reverend Asher Rook. But Moon-Lady Ixchel simply threw back her head and laughed, inaudible at this distance—her mirth only redoubling as Pinkerton, exactly as frustrated as Love’d been by the prospect of being ignored, charged headlong at the giant thing, hurling blast after blast of hex-bolts, only to be sent flying a half-dozen yards with one backhanded slap.

  Morrow felt Yancey stir, and relaxed his hold, without releasing her entirely. This what you expected? he asked silently, link still vibrant-clear between them.

  Her own laughter, far gentler than the Lady’s, washed back over him like water, cold and sparkling. Stopped “expecting” anything a long time ago, Edward, she answered—and this time it was she who tightened her grasp in return, on him. Still and all, though, might be we should try to clear out of here, too . . . together, if you like.